Topic: Counterfactuals
The Myth of the Categorical Counterfactual
By David Barnett
Remarkably, standard theories presuppose that, contrary to their surface form, counterfactuals are actually categorical statements. On this view, to state that, if it were that A, it would be that C is to state something, not relative to any supposition or hypothesis, but categorically. Differences in detail among the standard theories are differences over which thing is categorically stated by a counterfactual. Nelson Goodman (1947) says that it is an entailment from the antecedent, together with laws of nature and particular facts about the actual world, to the consequent; Robert Stalnaker (1968) says that it is a predication of a single possible world; and David Lewis (1973) says that it is an existential generalization over a set of possible worlds.
By contrast, W.V.O. Quine (1950), John Mackie (1973), Michael Dummett (1978), and Dorothy Edgington (1995) maintain that counterfactuals are as their surface form suggests: conditional statements. I defend this view by presenting a datum that no categorical interpretation can accommodate. The only way to accommodate the datum is to turn to a conditional, or what I shall call a suppositional interpretation, on which to state that, if it were that A, it would be that C is to state, from within the scope of the supposition that it were that A, that it would be that C. On this view, what is stated by a counterfactual is that it would be that C, and what is supposed by it is that it were that A. Counterfactual statements are acts of supposing-cum-stating. The idea of a categorical counterfactual one that states what it does outside the scope of any suppositionis a myth.
Posted by Tony Marmo
at 15:52 GMT
